Two years before Brian De Palma released Scarface, he made Blow Out (1981), a tense thriller starring John Travolta and Nancy Allen. The film failed to make any money, despite the star power of Travolta, yet it was a critical favorite.
Blow Out is about Jack (Travolta), a sound man for a B-movie studio in Philadelphia that specializes in slasher exploitation films. He records the sound of a car accident, which he believes is actually the sound of a murder. He pulls Sally (Allen) out of the car, but isn’t able to save the other victim, who turns out to be the most popular candidate in the presidential race. Everyone works hard to cover up the possibility of a murder, but Jack is unconvinced. He recruits Sally to help him. Jack has to avoid the powers that are trying to take that candidate down so that he can expose them.
De Palma borrows heavily from his influences, creating an odd combination of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up (which has a very similar storyline where a photographer thinks he witnessed a murder) and any number of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest thrillers. In Blow-Up, Antonioni filmed ‘swinging’ London with no romanticism, and De Palma and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond do the same here with ‘80s Philadelphia. De Palma’s tense script is where he borrows from Hitchcock, with multiple layers of a complex plot with characters who probably should never have come in contact with each other, but do.
The actors go above and beyond, since this could be Travolta’s best performance and John Lithgow also has a stunning supporting role as the killer. However, it is the bleak ending that makes this film. It’s hard to write about it without giving away much, but there are some amazing shots in the last ten minutes. The beautiful slow-motion shots of Travolta running through a parade prove that De Palma was the successor to Sam Peckinpah in that department. That is where Blow Out really elevates itself from good to great.
The Blu-ray release of the film is about as good as it gets, which isn’t surprising since Criterion got the rights from MGM to release it. Films from the early ‘80s have this wonderful grungy, disgusting look, which really pops out. De Palma captured that era of Philadelphia perfectly in the film, and Criterion did a wonderful job bringing that look to home video. They also included interviews with De Palma, Allen and cameraman Garrett Brown, as well as De Palma’s first feature Muder à la Mod, which makes a quick appearance in the film.